Steampunk Silhouette Fairy

Hello crafty peeps and welcome to my crafty nook! Uh oh it's Friday the 13th today so I'll be touching wood and encouraging my fur baby Jinx to run in front of me (but not trip me up like he usually does!) as he's a black cat and considered lucky in the UK. With a bit of luck and avoidance of going ANYWHERE I should be ok lol. In all honesty I'm not that superstitious and the only reason I'll be staying indoors is because we're expecting a parcel today. I've had a sleepless night - it was just one of those times when my brain wouldn't switch off long enough for me to fall asleep - so I pulled an all nighter and did a bit of crafting. I coloured in a Kaisercraft stamped image from the "Suga Pop" range which features a couple of cutesy owls (I love owls) but I haven't bothered to take a photo as it was just ProMarker practice. However I have taken a few pics of a steampunk fairy picture I've made for my sister. 

Steampunk silhouette fairy with metal/card gears and butterfly

 Regular readers of this blog will notice that this is an old favourite of mine in fact I made my sister a card using this image for her birthday last December and she liked it so much that when I offered to make her one in the colours of her choice, she jumped at it. Teresa asked me to make her a picture (for framing) using lilacs and purples so I hope she likes what I've made for her. I started off with a 5.5" square piece of cream card (I used cream because I have loads but prefer to use white card stock for toppers and card bases and for this project the original colour is covered with distress inks) and I covered it with Seedless Preserve Distress ink using a blending tool then I went round the edges towards the centre but leaving a space with Dusty Concorde. I blended both inks together until I got a smooth finish as desired. I stamped the fairy image using Memento Tuxedo Black ink but carefully wiped away the central parts (the veins) of the wings so that I could stamp them with cogs and gears. I also stamped the star dust and mushrooms at this point. My Wink of Stella brush pen is nearly out of ink so after swiping it over the steampunked wings I got a new WOS pen out and prepped it, unfortunately I squeezed a little too vigorously and too much ink came out. Although it's called clear the fluid which the shimmer is suspended in actually has a silver tint to it and as too much liquid came out of the brush tip, my wings ended up silvery instead of it having a bleaching effect on the Distress inks as it usually does. I don't mind too much though because although it almost obscures the cogs and gears etc that I stamped if you move the panel to a different angle you can see them through the shimmer which gives them an ethereal appearance - I imagine a steampunk fairy's wings to be half clockwork and half magic. The solid fairy image didn't stamp as dark as I would have liked so I went over it with a black WOS brush marker. I covered the mushroom caps with a layer of clear WOS and added splodges of it to the star dust sprinkles. I added some silhouetted flowers and leaves from a Lindsay Mason stamp set as shown. Once I was happy with this image I layered it onto black card stock then onto purple/lilac holographic card. I cut a sheet of lilac shimmer card that came from Crafter's Companion (I won it a few years ago in a card making competition with some stamps, rock-a-blocks and spray and stick) to 7 1/4" square and layered this underneath the holographic card. Finally I cut a sheet of dark purple ribbed card to 8" square and added the fairy layered topper to the centre. 

Close up of "Steampunked" wings

Slightly different angle showing steampunk fairy

The pictures above show the ethereal cogs and gears in the fairy's wings. To highlight the steampunk elements of the fairy I decided to add some metal embellishments to the finished piece. I usually add a butterfly rub-on to this image but instead added a metal butterfly using a Dovecrafts 'Metallics' mini brad (I punched a small hole through all the layers first using a WRMK crop-a-dile hole punch) I bent the wings up slightly to add interest to the butterfly. I got a cogs and gears die set from ECAP a while back and used them to cut out card shapes which I either painted with copper Cosmic Shimmer paints (absolutely love these paints!) or I covered them with Versamark ink and double embossed them using silver and copper embossing powders. I'm really pleased with how my homemade cogs and gears turned out because the embossed ones are on par with the metal bought ones. I got a selection of made and bought cogs and gears and added them to the bottom right of the panel using different sized brads - I've even found some Woodware screw top brads which look very steampunky! With the exception of the second from the top cog, the gears and cogs can be moved but unfortunately they don't really move each other - I'm going to frame this eventually so having moving parts isn't exactly a priority.

Guess which gears and cogs are the metal ones?

The clue is the screw brads *grin*

Another angle - the wings are now silver!

I hope you've enjoyed this project, I shall be on the look out for a suitable frame (a box frame would be good) and once it's framed I'll add a finished project photo to this post. I really hope my sister likes it too. As always if you have any questions or comments please leave them in the box below and until next time - keep crafting!

Love and crafty hugs,

Sarah xxxx

Passion for ProMarkers Blog Challenge week 281 - Garden Life

Hello crafty peeps and welcome to my crafty nook! I hope you are all well and enjoyed the weekend. I've very nearly organised my crudy! There are just a few hot spots that need tidying up and the floor to vacuum but I'm very pleased with how it's turned out, most things now have a designated home which makes tidying up after a crafting session a lot easier and I even have a few box files, boxes and baskets empty ready for new purchases. It isn't perfect but as near to a workable system that I can get in the space available, ideally I should have a stash purge and get rid of things I haven't used for a while but I gave quite a bit of stuff away just before Christmas and I'm reluctant to do so again just a month later. Like most things in life it's a 'work in progress' and I'm sure it won't stay this way for long.

As you probably know Tuesdays are when the new challenge is announced on Passion for ProMarkers and this week's theme is "Garden Life", I may enter this challenge a few times as I have quite a few floral and gardening themed stamps. My first offering is an old stamp set (004) from Kanban and features a rose bush. This stamp set was a real favourite of mine a few years ago but as I've got more stamp sets it's fallen out of favour. I thought this week's challenge was an excellent reason to start using it again. I stamped the image out three times and coloured it in using ProMarkers (Poppy and Crimson for the roses, Holly and Pine for the leaves with a smidgen of Sandstone for the stems). Once coloured I fussy cut out some leaves, the large bloom rose, the inner part of the largest rose and a fully opened smaller rose and went round the cut areas with the crimson or Pine  ProMarker depending on which component it was, to stop them looking so raw. I shaped them slightly with a bone folder. I decoupaged the largest rose using different thicknesses of sticky foam pads and added sticky pads to the single layer rose and the leaves and layered these over the matching flat images on the main panel. I added the large rose last as I wanted it to be above the leaves.

I layered the card panel to black card stock then matted that onto black holographic card stock using tape runner. I cut an A4 sheet of Acetate to slightly wider than my layered panel and scored both sides so that the central part of the acetate was a few millimetres larger than the card panel. I added red liner tape to both flaps and stuck them to the back of the card which causes the acetate to bow outwards. I added a 3D butterfly to the upper right hand side of the acetate dome.

I haven't mounted this onto a card blank yet as I'm not sure how I want to present it, I might just add a panel of white card to the back to write on as the bow of the dome means it already stands up to be put on display without a card blank.

Click here for this week's challenge: promarkerchallenge.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/week-281garden-life.html
I hope you like my latest creation, I will add another post if I make any more Garden Life inspired cards. As always if you have any comments or questions please use the box below or the comments form on the side bar, until next time - keep crafting!

Love and crafty hugs,

Sarah xxx